Pepsi Promoting Rape? Or Just a Bad Font Choice?

Yes, it is actually as awful and awkward as it sounds: Pepsi created the marketing blunder of the year on this one by inadvertently advertising…rape?

After what was supposed to be a cool co-promotion between A Bathing Ape (AAPE), a Japanese clothing company, and PepsiCo, a silly (and confusingly offensive) ad has suddenly created a PR debacle for both companies. Pepsi’s ad certainly doesn’t intend to promote rape but its typography choice sure sends that message.

This is a prime example of an important design principle you don’t want to mess up: using typography that works for one word and not for another.

In this case, Pepsi’s font works wonderfully for their company logo. But when that same typeface was used to promote AAPE’s brand, designers somehow failed to notice that the capital ‘A’ looks an awful lot like a capital ‘R.’ Considering the acronym that follows that mistaken ‘R,’ all Pepsi can do now is say, Oops.

Oops, indeed. They better pull that ad down in a hurry before it goes viral.